


A Dwarf, A Ghost, and A Slave

by Zandris_Hugal



Series: Master of the Jedi [1]
Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Original Trilogy, Star Wars Prequel Trilogy
Genre: Friendship, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Spirtual, Tragedy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-01
Updated: 2021-01-01
Packaged: 2021-03-11 07:55:32
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 8,403
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28467882
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Zandris_Hugal/pseuds/Zandris_Hugal
Summary: On the twenty-second anniversary of his exile, Master Yoda is contacted through the Force by his last living colleague. The Knight who brought night to all he once held dear, and who cruelly promises the worst is yet to come. Two-shot.
Relationships: Anakin Skywalker & Yoda, Darth Vader & Yoda, Obi-Wan Kenobi & Yoda
Series: Master of the Jedi [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2086278
Comments: 2
Kudos: 13





	1. Chapter 1

**Location** \- The Swamp World of Dagobah

 **Time** \- The opening minutes of _Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back._

* * *

At the center of a hut-sized emptied skull, the final legacy of the thirty meter tall predatory beast that ruled the locale of bogs, swamps, and mist over two decades before, sat the warrior who slew and repurposed it.

If one used corporeal eyes to behold the cross-legged warrior, he would see decrepit dwarf not even half the height of the average ten year old human girl. A goblin-esque creature whose derisory two-thirds of a meter height allowed him to operate within the hut like a humanoid would in a master bedroom. Not to mention the profusely wrinkled saggy green skin that begged the question whether this life-form would manage to open his eyes even once more.

However, if one endowed with a connection to the omnipresent ethereal energies of the Force looked upon the green midget with the eyes of the soul, he would see a luminous star of stupefying splendor who simultaneously exuded bewildering power and breathtaking peace.

The brilliant presence of this being would feel like both the warm nurturing sun of the luscious green world of Naboo and the cool breezes of the marvelous wonder that Alderaan was but three years before.

Yet beneath the harmony and tranquility of the enlightened monk lay the deepest melancholy. A ceaseless service of mournful requiem for a nigh-extinct fellowship of Force-empowered peacekeepers and guardians that defended the galaxy for over thirty galactic standard millennia.

On the eve of the cataclysmic Clone War, this most venerable Jedi Master was the leader of a galactically revered clan possessing some forty-four thousand members. Eight thousand infantile and juvenile Jedi Younglings. Six thousand adolescent Jedi Padawans. Twenty-five thousand blooming Jedi Knights. And five thousand wise Jedi Masters.

Now, a quarter of a century later, the Jedi Order was galactically reviled as a defunct order of charlatans and traitors. An order for which the ten thousand Jedi Knights and Jedi Masters who survived the brutal three year Clone War received a final salute and send off by way of blue blaster bolts shot by the very Clone Army battalions they had led. The few dozen Jedi Generals and Commanders that survived that were branded by the galaxy's ruling government as traitors of the highest order. Accused of having instigated, funded, and prolonged a three year Galactic Civil War in an insidious attempt to undermine and usurp the authority of the Galactic Republic. And thus considered deserving of having their Coruscant Headquarters invaded, plundered, and burned by the Clone Army's 501st battalion and the Sith Lord who led it. A Sith Lord who ensured every Jedi inhabitant of the colossal Temple was slain, down to the last infant.

All this happened at the behest of the Dark Lord of the Sith who sat across a desk from the Jedi's Master for hundreds of hours-long meetings over the former's thirteen year Supreme Chancellorship of the Galactic Republic. A Chancellorship during which said Chief of State secretly coalesced the Confederacy of Independent Systems. Then directed and empowered them to create a more powerful and plentiful droid army than galaxy had every dreamed of. All to insidiously undermine and usurp the Galactic Republic, and transform it into a fascist Galactic Empire.

So blinded by a galaxy spanning dark veil draped over the Force was the Jedi's Master that only at the end did he understand. And on the day he did, the twelve members of the ruling Jedi Council were reduced to two members. And proportionality, that specific demographic of the Jedi Order survived exponentially better than the all the others.

A common man would go so far as to say a full quarter of the Jedi Council survived. But the third member did so in a way that utterly betrayed the principles of the Jedi Order and Galactic Republic he swore a lifelong oath of fidelity to. And thus, from a Jedi Master's perspective, he destroyed himself in an incorrigible manner.

Once the most promising Jedi Knight in the Order's history, Anakin Skywalker cast all aside in a mad grab for the power and prominence promised by the devious Supreme Chancellor, who specifically chose to reveal himself to the Jedi Order at large by directly telling Knight Skywalker.

Playing on the thirteen year mentorship and companionship he had given the young Jedi, who never truly assimilated into the Jedi Order due to his boastful pride over his unprecedented potential and the uncontrolled emotions born of an extended childhood outside of the Jedi Order, the Supreme Chancellor maneuvered Skywalker in such a way that he would have to choose once and for all between the Path of the Jedi and the Damnation of the Sith.

With the Dark Lord of the Sith orchestrating a deadlock between himself and the Deputy Master of the Jedi Order for Skywalker's viewing pleasure, Skywalker chose to strike down one of the eleven colleagues he sat in Council with. Thus signing his life away to the desolation and destruction of the Dark Side, which was bound to forever dominate his destiny as the Sith Lord Darth Vader.

Nineteen years after this decision, three years before the present day, Darth Vader met the Jedi Master who had trained him to Knighthood and loved him like a son for one final duel. Jedi Master Obi-Wan Kenobi, as good a friend and companion as the Master of the Jedi Order ever had, concluded his final lightsaber duel by transcending the material plane to become a Force spirit.

Master Kenobi, who retained his personality and presence when he joined the Force and was thus able to visibly appear and speak to one sensitive to the energies, faithfully kept the now last living Jedi Master company. This however did not change the fact that the pointy-eared wisened goblin was the last of his Order.

There were but two hopes left for the Jedi, hopes of rebirth. The children Anakin Skywalker sired upon the now long deceased Senator Padme Amidala of Naboo, a son and a daughter. Luke Skywalker and Leia Skywalker respectively.

But a most difficult path lay ahead for whoever rose. Knowing that the two Lords of the Sith would sense the unmistakable power of a Skywalker the moment one began training, the two Jedi Council Masters who survived the initial wave of Operation Knightfall elected to train the Skywalkers when they reached such an age that they could understand the gravity of the threat Darth Vader and his master possessed.

Obi-Wan, who spent nineteen years on the desert world Tatooine over-watching Luke as a quirky hermit and gave him a couple days worth of instruction in the Jedi Arts before his rematch with Luke's father, naturally favored the boy and advocated that he be the one trained.

The last Jedi was unsure of this however. Though thousands upon thousands of light-years away from either Skywalker, the final Master of the Jedi achieved greater power, accord, and concert with the Force than any Jedi in history. The omnipresence of the Force allowed the ultimate practitioner of the Light to watch the children all their lives.

It was true that Luke currently knew more of the Force and had achieved astonishing power through it, power equivalent to that which a sixteen year old Obi-Wan Kenobi had at the commencement of his apprenticeship under Jedi Master Qui-Gon Jinn. Power which took Obi-Wan Kenobi, who grew to be the most able Jedi that the Jedi's Master ever knew apart from himself, an entire decade and a half of set curriculum to learn as opposed to Luke's three years of spontaneous self-training.

Tremendous might and ability flowed through the young Skywalker boy, in demonstrably greater quantity than any practitioner of the Force who came before him. But just as strong did the Force's power flow in his sister Leia. A remarkable woman who radiated a greater sense of maturity, temperance, and wisdom than the twin brother she did not know she had.

Yes, the Jedi's Master considered Obi-Wan to be correct when he pointed out that the perspicacious, methodical, and obdurate mind she developed as a necessity for her lifelong immersion into the treacherous and duplicitous world of bureaucracy and politics would make her less open to the ethereal mindset of the Jedi.

The Jedi's Master believed Obi-Wan to be doubly correct in stating that as a former Imperial Senator, no matter how good hearted Leia was on a personal level, she would be far more resistant to belief and trust in an omnipresent spiritual force of virtue, purity, and equity simply due to all the malevolence, corruption, and cruelty any politician of any government was bound to see. Much less of the brutal fascist regime which dominated the galaxy presently.

But Luke's own interest and intrigue in the Jedi Order stemmed from cravings of adventures and excitement. A wish to soar above the humble beginnings he felt he spent his early life shackled to. This sentiment was far from unfamiliar to the Jedi's Master, and in the worst possible way.

But most damning of all, unlike Leia Skywalker's still secret heritage and hidden potential to channel the Force's power to an unprecedented degree, Luke Skywalker's origin had been surmised and deduced by the Dark Lord of the Sith and Darth Vader.

 ** _"Yoda,"_** a faint voice echoed through the desolate dark grey night of clouds and mist. Sounding everywhere whilst coming from nowhere.

Yoda's flappy green ears perked up to full attention in an instant as his amber-green eyes shot open. Yet that was but a reflexive reaction, for the eight centuries plus eight decades the Jedi's Master spent in conscious study of the Force's power allowed him to easily discern the ethereal from the corporeal.

Yoda also knew without a conscious thought that the Force-conjured voice was not that of his dearest friend Master Kenobi. Nor was it of Master Jinn, whose spirit had given Kenobi and the Jedi's Master himself the training necessary to retain their identities and personas when they joined the Force.

The voice...it radiated cold contempt and bitter hate. The emanations of a dark Force presence.

But, as Yoda reminded himself as he resumed his meditation, this was far from the first time a dark whisper had traveled to him. Two millennia ago, the Dark Lady of the Sith Darth Noctis used the planet as a personal retreat from both the Jedi Order she devastated and the Crimson Knights she commanded. When she died, her loyal attendees buried her in small underground cavern that would not be discovered until Jedi Master Qui-Gon Jinn came upon it during his quest for enlightenment only four decades before present day.

Though the Jedi Master burned the mummified Dark Lady's corpse and scattered the ashes, the millennia the corpse of one of the Sith Order's greatest rulers lay there saturated her burial grounds with such darkness that it would have taken an entire Jedi Council days of deep meditation to undo.

Powerful as Master Yoda was, an entire Jedi Council he was not. Hence why he used the very darkness of the cave to mask his presence from the ever roving gaze of the Galactic Emperor.

Unfortunately, the tomb had taken on the same cruel guile and wile of its power source. Which it expressed by manifesting illusions of a subject's greatest fears and regrets, just like Darth Noctis did in her days of life. The cave ceaselessly harassed Yoda for the first year of the Jedi Master's stay, especially bombarding him with the voices of Deputy Master of the Jedi Windu and Darth Tyranus, before the diminutive green Jedi's Master learned to distinguish and dispel its voice.

 ** _"Yoda,"_** a dark voice harshly rustled again into the night air. But though the power of the voice centered around the tomb...

 _Different about this voice, something is_ , Yoda pondered.

Although the Dark Side was strong in the tomb, a sentient being was required to provoke and galvanize the energies to action - typically against said sentient being. Yoda being a case in point many a time. Thus, whenever the tomb "spoke" to him, it truly was just a reflection of the Jedi Master's own subconscious projections.

So for the Master of the Fallen Order to be completely unfamiliar with and bewildered by the voice speaking to him? Especially after he had isolated and barred the tomb's presence from his mind?

 ** _"I know...you can...hear me. Cease hiding...and face me,"_** the taunting voice dare in faint surround sound.

Now that Yoda had confirmed within himself that the voice was not some reflected projection, he discerned a presence - distant though it was - which should have been obvious from the first time he spoke.

The voice did indeed center around the Tomb of Darth Noctis. However, it was now clear to Yoda that the voice's owner was simply using the tomb as a focal point for his Force-powered telepathic projection, which crossed a vast distance from wherever he was in the Imperial Fleet to where Yoda was now.

"Vader," Yoda answered.

 _" **Indeed,"**_ the Sith Lord responded with a voice possessing the sharpness and tone of his mechanical baritone, but a much more human timbre.

He sounded like he would have if his duel with Master Kenobi on Mustafar twenty-two years ago did not leave the then nascent Sith Lord as a limbless torso roasted alive by the flames of a lava river he was a cursed hairsbreadth from falling in to.

Oh how different the galaxy would have been had Master Kenobi not left Vader's fate to chance! If he had then and there ensured Vader's death before walking away in anguish and sorrow.

 ** _"Should we...not speak? One...last remnant...of a fallen order...to another?"_** Darth Vader prodded.

Since the tomb served as the point of connection for the Sith Lord's power rather than a Force-link with Yoda himself, the fact that fallen Jedi Knight managed to project his power five kilometers away from his focal point testified the preeminent might of the dark scion of the Force.

But not even he could keep that up indefinitely. The continuation of the conversation would be solely dependent on the willingness of the Jedi's Master to travel to the tomb.

"Hmmmm," the diminutive green sage pondered.

"Speak with him, should I?" he voiced into the air. But not, as any bystander would have believed, to himself.

For as the Force was omnipresent, so to was a being who had become one with the power.

 _"If into the dark tomb you go, only pain will you find,"_ came the ethereal response of Yoda's dearest friend. A clever play on the words Yoda had told him two decades and two years before when he watched the security recordings of the ruined Jedi Temple to discern the identity of the Sith Lord who spearheaded the merciless attack.

"Yet necessary the knowledge was for you, no?" Yoda countered with a wan smile.

 _"The knowledge was already in my heart. I just needed to free myself from the shackles of my willful ignorance,"_ the wise Jedi Master responded, materializing as a blue-tinted luminous version of the venerable middle aged man he ended his corporeal life as.

"Ceaseless learning, the life of a Jedi is," Yoda responded to his friend.

"Knowledge and wisdom there always is to find, even from the least expected sources," the Jedi's Master added.

 _"Of all the things that Darth Vader imparted upon the galaxy over the decades, knowledge and wisdom do not rank amongst them,"_ Obi-Wan Kenobi responded.

"Yet insight he can give me into himself, and how best to prepare his child to confront and defeat him," Yoda returned.

" **Strong** with the Dark Side has he become. Significantly stronger than he was three years ago when faced him last you did," the nearly nine-hundred year old Jedi's Master voiced.

 _"The magnitude of his dark power has increased by an extra half,"_ Obi-Wan solemnly informed.

Yoda's old heart skipped a beat at that statement. Over the nineteen years of the exile he and Obi-Wan undertook, the latter's amplitude of power tripled from what it was at the end of the Clone War. The final accounting of the power Master Kenobi achieved in the corporeal realm ranked at a full three-quarters of Yoda's own, and it was with this that the Jedi Master fought Darth Vader to a draw.

For Vader's power to have increased by an extra half...

" _Yes old friend. Vader's might has eclipsed that which the Dark Lord of the Sith himself held when you faced him on the first night of his wicked Imperial reign,"_ the luminous Jedi Master confirmed.

"Made a mistake did we, choosing to delay the training of the Skywalkers so long?" Yoda could not help but ask, terrible worry besieging his mind and soul.

 _"It would have been nearly impossible to convince a children with such power to constantly conceal and contain themselves. Much less get them to understand why it was necessary,"_ Obi-Wan reminded.

"Few are the paths to restoration and balance. Few indeed..." Yoda whispered mournfully.

 _"Yet it is from the darkest of nights that emerge the brightest of lights,"_ Obi-Wan consoled.

"Face him, I will," the Jedi's Master decided on the subject of Darth Vader.

"Take stock of all his vulnerabilities, I must!" he insisted with a passion and determination that surprised even him.

But with the path to a Jedi victory so slim and narrow, the elderly sage knew he had to acquire every last iota of knowledge available about the enemy he would send a Jedi Skywalker to contest and best.

The wizened Jedi's Master telekinetically summoned his trusty gnarled walking stick to his hand, rose to his small three toed feet, and set off for the tomb.

* * *

Two hours later, the Jedi's Master reached the withered, misshapen grove which served as the threshold to the empty tomb of a once galactically feared and now all but forgotten Dark Lady of the Sith.

Such was the transient nature of the Dark Lords of the Sith. For without the chronicles of the Jedi Order they so hated, who would remember the battle prowess of the Dark Lord Tulak Hord? The domineering cunning of the Dark Lord Marka Ragnos? The ravenous ambition of the Dark Lord Naga Sadow? The calamitous innovation of the Dark Lord Exar Kun? The intellectual brilliance of the Dark Lord Revan? The shrewd savagery of the Dark Lord Bane?

These and Dark Lords like them infused rampant terror and ruinous chaos in the galaxy during each of their times. Each brought death and destruction to billions. And yet, each eventually met their own final defeat. Some fell to the saber of a tenacious Jedi Master or Knight. Others were destroyed by the powers of a subordinate Sith Lord. And a few succumbed to naught but their own mortality.

Thirty millennia after the Jedi student Xendor abandoned the the Order his mother created and sought eternal glory and power, not a single Dark Lord had ruled an empire for so much as a millennium! The Sith ancestral homeworld of Moraband, which ten millennia ago served as the vibrant center of a roaring empire, now existed as a barren wasteland. Home to nothing but to ransacked tombs.

The ninety years young Emperor and his even younger chief servant Darth Vader had acquired more power and control over the energies of the Force and the sentient peoples of the galaxy than any in their lineage's dark history, this Yoda could not deny. But he also knew that all Sith Lord's had transient reigns. Humans especially so. That said...

 _The sooner it ends, better for all it will be_ , Yoda determined as he finally reached the circular hole in the ground that served as the tomb's opening. Other species would regard it as a narrow opening, one just wide enough for a member of the thickset Gamorrean species to wedge himself through. But for the diminutive Jedi Master, it may as well have been a palace threshold.

Clutching his stick tight against his body, Yoda then drew upon the buoyant power of the Force to gently levitate himself down through the entrance, past the crooked branches and twigs within the tomb, and to the cavern's floor five meters below.


	2. Chapter 2

**_"You came,"_** the ethereal voice of Darth Vader greeted the Jedi's Master.

"A long time it has been," Yoda neutrally responded.

As the green sage's eyes adjusted to both the physical and ethereal darkness of the cave, he beheld the back of a muscular brown haired human figure about ten or twelve centimeters short of two meters. The dark clothed figure stood with two black gloved hands clasped behind his back. The projected representation of Darth Vader.

"Chose a human depiction of yourself, did you?" Yoda rhetorically inquired the half-cyborg Sith Lord.

 ** _"As you always liked to say, luminous beings are we. Not this crude matter,"_** Darth Vader responded as his form turned around.

The Sith Lord's presentation of himself did not represent any appearance his corporeal body had ever had.

His face had been "aged" with the effect a decade would have on a human body. Losing any remaining blubber of youth to produce a firm rectangular face, and adding a slight outlines to his dimples. But other than that, his skin was freed of any blemishes or scars.

His golden brown hair was darkened to a chocolate brown and styled in a four centimeter tall crew cut with the upright hair on the top of his head slightly combed to the right of his face.

As for his face, gone was the slight golden hue which used to dazzle the reporters of Coruscant. Instead, his skin took on an alabaster tone complimented by the glowing yellow-colored and red-rimmed irises of his eyes. The typical countenance of a light skinned humanoid steeped in the thrall of the Dark Side.

The figure dressed himself in a form fitting double breasted midnight blue tunic. An attire which projected material wealth with the dual columns of six golden buttons, the silver tunic lining, and the silver leaves patterned on the tunic's ruby red collar and ruby red T shaped cuffs.

To top his torso of, the Sith Lord boasted an obsidian black durasteel pauldron on his left shoulder. In a twisted reference to the Jedi chest armor he wore in the first year of the Clone War, the obsidian pauldron sported the symbol of the Order of the Sith Lords. A crimson red circle surrounded by a white ring surrounded by a red outline with four individual three pointed crowns positioned in the shape of an X.

Darth Vader's chosen form wore a golden belt just below the bottom row of his tunic's buttons. Underneath the tunic, and visible from the mid-thigh to just below the Sith's knees, were form fitting midnight blue trousers lined with silver on the outside of both legs. The attire was completed with black leather boots just shy of knee length, and splendidly patterned and buckled with pure gold.

"Decreased, your vanity has not," Yoda scorned the materialistic Sith Lord.

Even during his thirteen tenure as a Jedi, Darth Vader had been obsessed with his variant of flash and style. To set himself apart from the humble tans of the robes nearly all Jedi wore, the vain Skywalker wore reddish-brown or black undertunics overlayed with black or navy blue leather overtunics for the latter five years of his professed allegiance to the Jedi.

 ** _"Forgive me for not choosing to drown in the most squalid locale the galaxy has to offer,"_** Darth Vader mocked.

 ** _"But perhaps you find a special kinship in the most derelict and dilapidated dwelling to ever exist,"_** the Sith Lord taunted.

 ** _"The perfect setting for the Master of the Jedi who outlived all forty-four thousand of his Jedi!"_** Darth Vader cruelly finished, his yellow eyes gleaming.

"And you? Happy are you, with your dwelling? Your trappings?" Yoda returned with his own inquisition.

 ** _"I have become more powerful than any Jedi. Even you,"_** Darth Vader thundered with a note of pride. Thundered the exact words the Jedi's Master heard from his own fallen Padawan a quarter of a century ago.

Though unlike with Darth Tyranus, Vader's self-assessment could be deemed truthful from the perspective of a Sith Lord. Yoda sensed that Darth Vader had grown three-fold in the magnitude of his power since the final days of the Republic. And in those final days of the Jedi, Vader indeed possessed markedly greater battle prowess and channeled greater raw power than any in the Order save its Master.

One needed look no further than at how the twenty-three year old warrior dispatched Darth Tyranus, one of the deadliest nemeses the Jedi Order had ever known, and continued the rescue mission of the treacherous Chancellor with his full strength and stamina.

Yet Darth Vader proved the ultimate example that the "strength" achieved by darkly bending the Force to one's will did not birth "happiness." And his boast proved it.

"Ask not, did I about your presumed power," Yoda calmly reminded.

 ** _"But is not everything in this universe about power?"_** Vader responded, right eyebrow rising as he did so.

"Then nothing you are! A life in shackles, you live!" Yoda riposted.

 ** _"I am half the age of that decrepit fiend and have grown in power at twice the rate,"_** Darth Vader retorted pompously.

 **" _He will not be the Emperor for much longer,"_** the Sith Lord promised.

"Only one of your shackles, Sidious is," Yoda stated.

 ** _"Once I destroy him, I will have full access to the technology, alchemy, and rituals necessary to reconstruct my body. Or simply create a duplicate and transfer myself into it,"_** Darth Vader replied, once again proving to see only his materialistic and corporeal realities.

"Of your physical chains, I speak not," the wise Jedi's Master clarified.

 ** _"I have no chains, only inconveniences_ ,"** Darth Vader retorted with a note of sharpness.

 **" _Once I released my passion from the tawdry dogma of your clan, I gained the strength to destroy your paltry order and rise above it,"_** the Sith Lord started.

 **" _My strength brought me power beyond that dreamed of by any Jedi, even Anakin Skywalker,"_** the fallen Jedi Knight spoke, referring to his past self in the third person.

 ** _"Day by day, my power brings me ever closer to my ultimate victory, my destiny to be the greatest master of the Force that this galaxy shall ever know,"_** the Sith Lord projected.

 ** _"Very soon, the day of victory shall be at hand. The day of my final revenge. The day the Force which sired me shall free me of all remaining nuisances that you deem to be chains,"_** Darth Vader concluded his stylized recitation of the Sith Code.

"Hmmmmph," Yoda sounded in both derision at the Sith Code and sadness that the most promising Jedi Knight the galaxy ever knew fell for such a hollow trap.

"Warned you did I, when first met we did, about the consequences of passion you have engorged yourself on," the Jedi sage reminded.

"Told the nine year old boy who stood before me, that fear leads to anger. Anger leads to hate. Hate, leads to suffering," Yoda quoted himself.

"Deep was your fear of the loss of your mother. Fell into the jaws of anger when Shmi joined the Force, you did," Yoda remembered the profound pain and resultant rage the twenty year old Padawan Skywalker felt at the death of his mother.

Vader's dark power flared, and Yoda did not even need to look to see that the Sith Lord was barely containing a snarl from the trip down memory lane.

"This anger...festered in you, it did. Blamed the Jedi, you did. And every time a decision the Council made that agree with, you did not...compounded was your anger. Anger which led to hate," the Jedi's Master recounted.

 ** _"The inane and insipid leadership of your imbecilic 'Council' saw the deaths of three Jedi Knights for every four and one Jedi Master for every four by the Battle of Coruscant!"_** Darth Vader cut back.

 ** _"Jedi Knight Skywalker dutifully reminded you fools time and again that the only way to end the war would be to cut off the head of the Confederacy. But he was like a son to you, wasn't he?"_** Vader sneered.

 ** _"Attached to Valgnir Dooku, you were,"_** the Sith Lord mockingly imitated.

Yoda's breath caught momentarily in his throat, for Darth Vader was correct on that count. A year short of a century ago, the then eight-hundred year old Jedi's Master traveled to Serreno to protect its people from a vicious invasion. In a most unexpected turn of events, the six year old grandson of the then Count of Serreno ended up saving the Jedi's Master with stupefyingly strong latent Force powers.

Upon analyzing the young boy's blood at the first available chance, Yoda found a midichlorian count just shy of 19,000. Ranking the boy then and there among the ten highest counts ever recorded in the Jedi Order. The young scion of Serreno's royal family boasted a higher count than even the Wookiee Jedi Master who had led the Jedi and Republic forces in the reclamation of Coruscant a thousand years before the Clone War. Before said Jedi Master ushered the era of unprecedented peace in which he raised a young Yoda, trained him, and then groomed him to succeed him as Master of the Jedi.

For it was the duty of each Master of the Jedi to train and groom his or her successor. And in Valgnir Dooku, Yoda saw his successor. The boy's life of luxury prior to his training as a Jedi instilled streaks of arrogance and defiance beyond what was typical of a young Jedi, but Yoda believed he would outgrow it. And in no singular moment did Yoda feel more proud than when he sliced the Padawan braid off of Dooku on the Jedi's twenty-first birthday, making the boy he raised the youngest Jedi Knight in the Order's history at that time.

Dooku quickly became the greatest representative and negotiator the Jedi Order had seen since Jedi Master Mical four millennia prior, creating truces with some of the most unlikely factions. Such as the Nightsisters of Dathomir.

However, Jedi Master Dooku's insights proved to be a double-edged sword. The more he dealt with politics, the more repulsed and revolted he became by the selfishness, corruption, cruelty, and treachery of the denizens of the galaxy at large. It came to a point he recognized he just did not have the heart to be a Jedi any longer, much less Master of the Order. He passed on his Jedi Council seat to the then twenty-nine year old Mace Windu, the final Padawan of Jedi’s Master Yoda who by the rarest of chances proved to be a peer to Dooku himself in the sheer potential of his power, and suggested that Master Windu be the one groomed to succeed Yoda as Master of the Jedi.

What transpired in the ensuing two dozen years to drive the then kind and honorable fifty-six year old Jedi Retiree to so completely betray the Order he spent half a century in, Yoda still could not fully comprehend. But it was true that the few times he got the chance to interact with his once prize Padawan, the Jedi's Master doggedly tried to bring him back to the light. And he never had the heart to coalesce a team of Jedi Council Masters to hunt down the Sith Lord, much less lead said team as most Masters of the Jedi did in Sith Wars past.

"Correct you are. Attached to Dooku, I was," Yoda admitted.

"But let go of him, I did. When killed him Knight Skywalker did, hold it against Skywalker I did not," the Jedi's Master enunciated.

"Yet in the end, know we both do that the mastermind behind the war, Darth Tyranus was not," Yoda reflected Vader's argument.

 ** _"The Emperor would never have risen had the 'Republic' you and your predecessor forged not been so corrupt,"_** Darth Vader reflected.

"Speak against corruption now, you do?" Yoda snorted at the Sith Lord.

 ** _"The 'Constitution' of your Republic was a joke. There was no representative democracy, and there never was. It was an oligarchy which handed one set of laws to those born privilege, a much harsher set to those not, and spared no justice and rights for those in poverty,"_** Darth Vader retaliated.

 ** _"The Empire I helped create ensures anyone can rise to the highest ranks of authority and power on the merit of their ability and talent, regardless of the station they were born to in life,"_** the brown haired figure boasted, yellow eyes gleaming with a hint of pride and accomplishment.

"Oh? Misheard I must, about the rampant discrimination and destruction your Empire unleashes on non-humanoids," Yoda cooly returned.

 ** _"That is but a fault of the leader, not the system. Once a suitable Emperor sits upon the throne, true order and justice shall reign over the galaxy,"_** Darth Vader speedily countered.

"Disagree with you, the Wookiees would. However many left alive, you did!" Yoda bitterly accused.

To assume rigid fascist control over the galaxy without en-masse revolt, the Galactic Empire engaged in the eons-old trick of pointing to an enemy that the denizens of the galaxy needed to quake in fear of. And Emperor Palpatine, very familiar with the circumstances that led to the thousand year reign of the Second Galactic Republic, dared not use the Jedi for that purpose.

For its near millennium of rule, the Sith Empire forged by the Dark Lady Noctis and the succeeding Dark Lord Interitum engaged in a seemingly ceaseless war with a Jedi Order they kept at constant size of two or three thousand so as to provide the citizens of the Empire a perpetual need to surrender their rights, liberties, and wages in exchange for protection and security.

Then, under the reign of the Dark Lord Kaan, division and infighting amongst the dark warriors and enforcers of the two Sith Lords weakened that Empire to the point that the Jedi Order and the "Patriots" of the galaxy - heavily populated by the Outer Rim territories over which the Sith Empire did not exert power - managed to rise up and depose Kaan's rule.

Clearly, Darth Sidious did not want to risk the Sith Order having to spend another disgraceful millennium in hiding. So the enemies he propped up to terrify the galaxy posed no true threat to him, at the cost of them having to be replaced on a constant.

First up were the Wookiees. In their communions through the Force, Obi-Wan told him all about how the Empire engaged in an incessant fear mongering campaign. Portraying the Wookiees as a monstrous race of insatiably bloodthirsty savages who had declared war on the galaxy entire. Promising to pillage and plunder any and every planet they came across, slaughter all the men, rape all the women, and enslave all the children.

Of course, there was only so long that a single planet could pose a threat to the First Galactic Empire. And so other "beastly" races were "inspired" by the Wookiees to pose a threat to the "good and faithful citizens of the Empire" - such as the Lasats and the Bothans. With this fiendish tactic, the Galactic Empire invoked and inspired vicious racism against species that had forms distinctively differing from that of galaxy's most populous: the human race. Thus dividing the denizens of the galaxy against each other, distracting them from the true vicious warlords.

 ** _"Like I said, there will be order and justice once an Emperor that deigns to RUN his Empire sits upon the throne,"_** Darth Vader emphatically reiterated, apparently expressing a measure of disapproval for the Empire's conduct over the past two decades.

"Yet prolonged the war with the Alliance to Restore the Republic, you have," Yoda pointed out the Sith Lord's active participation in these tactics.

 ** _"What the galaxy truly needs is expansion. A stagnant and stationary government is destined to implode. You had your chance. You failed,"_** Darth Vader deflected.

After this fell a minute's long silence, in which the only motion was in the blinking of the green-amber eyes of the Jedi's Master and glowing hornet-yellow eyes of the projected form of the Sith Lord.

"Found me through your son, did you?" the diminutive green sage inquired.

 ** _"The strand linking your presence to his is exceedingly faint. Too faint for even the Emperor to discern off of the boy's aura, but not for the boy's creator. A creator who spent thirteen years underneath your heel,"_** Darth Vader answered.

 **" _But even upon recognizing your presence, it took me many months finally reach your squalid slum,"_** the Sith Lord...complimented.

"Expect you here, should I?" the Jedi's Master asked.

 ** _"I considered it,"_** Darth Vader began in response.

 ** _"I know there is nothing that would bring the Emperor more pleasure than killing you, and it would be most exhilarating to immutably deprive him of that,"_** the Sith Lord continued.

 ** _"Then...I saw just how you have desperately pinned all your remaining hopes on my son. The son of your worst enemy,"_** he pressed.

 ** _"Watching me take what is mine...it will be like losing your pathetic order all over again, won't it?"_** the Sith Lord inquired.

 ** _"Or perhaps even worse, since this time there will be no hope. You will watch all you lived and breathed for die, with no hope of amendment,"_** he postulated.

 ** _"A fate worse than death,"_** Darth Vader concluded.

"Speak from experience, do you?" Yoda returned.

Darth Vader did not respond. And at this moment, the venerable Jedi's Master perceived an opening.

"Bring warmth and hope to my heart, few politicians ever did. Very special in this regard, Senator Amidala was," Yoda began.

Darth Vader remained silent, but the green sage felt the Sith Lord's rage wax like the wind of an approaching hurricane.

"Truly for the good of her constituents and fellow citizens of the Republic, did Senator Amidala act. Reject the vast fortunes offered by the galaxy's corporate elite, she did!" the Jedi's Master recounted in reverent remembrance of one of the greatest politicians...one of the greatest sentient beings...he had ever interacted with.

"When buy the Senator's services, they could not, attempt on her life, the corporate powers did! Yet persevered through all, she did! The strength and will of a Jedi Knight, she had!" Yoda stated with passion that surprised even him.

Darth Vader's passion grew as well with the Jedi Master's statements. Grew in passionate anger, the power of which began to distort the tomb and the locale surrounding it. Darken the darkness while generating a harsh wind.

"A long and fruitful life, she would have had. Bring joy and justice to the galaxy, she would have. One...one of the greatest Chancellors in history, she would have been," the venerable sage continued, thorough unaffected and undeterred by the Sith Lord's display of tremendous power and profound fury.

"But cut short, her life was! Betrayed she was, by the one who claimed to love her most!" the Jedi's Master accused the Sith Lord before him, whose irises now glowed a molten orange just a few shades lighter than the now especially pronounced red outline about his irises.

The Sith Lord growled. Not by way of a projected physical sound, but by the harsh roar of a violent wind. Within the tomb itself, the presence of the most powerful Jedi there ever was naturally mitigated the effect of the distant Sith Lord's rage. However, the link Darth Vader had established with the tomb infused tremendous rage into the nexus of dark energy, which violently agitated and ionized the air of the grove and the surrounding locale. Thus forming a small derecho, replete with screeching winds, flashing lightning, and booming thunder.

While Yoda could have dispelled the storm, he knew that to deny Darth Vader a vent to his rage could provoke the Sith Lord to quit the conversation entirely. And every single second for which the Jedi's Master could daunt and dispirit his adversary could serve to impede and fetter the Sith's unprecedented rate of advancement. The most invaluable boons that Yoda could give to the young Skywalker that went on to conquer their father.

And chief amongst these boons...would be to sow pure terror in Darth Vader about the potential of his offspring. To imprint an inexorable forecast of defeat at the hands of who he sired. A prognostic that would hound, horrify, and hamper the Sith Lord in each and every second of that fateful duel.

 **" _Senator Amidala received the opportunity to create and disseminate more peace and prosperity than she could have ever dreamed of. She instead chose to cling to feckless fallacies and broken delusions. Thus, she paid the price for her lack of vision,"_** Darth Vader boomed out in a carefully contained monotone, clearly shaken by the current vector of the conversation.

"Her son, Luke Skywalker is," Yoda replied. A simple statement with an ocean's worth of meaning.

 ** _"The boy does not know any better. Once he truly understands the measureless power of he can achieve through his passion, Skywalker will relish and revel in it. Like his father before him,"_** Darth Vader projected.

"So sure, are you? For three years has he fought in war, like his father during the Clone War. Yet even without Jedi training, not towards the dark has this Skywalker strayed!" Yoda countered.

 ** _“The seeds are there and you know it!"_** Darth Vader exclaimed while emphatically shaking a pointed finger. An especially loud clap of thunder boomed outside of the tomb in self-made applause for the Sith Lord's proclamation.

 ** _"The pain of the losses he has suffered etched within his soul. The fear that he will lose his friends still among the living. The frustration and anger that he is not powerful enough to end the conflict,"_** the fallen Jedi Knight listed.

 **" _And...the hate he has for the one he believes to be the source of all his predicaments,"_** the boy's father finished.

"Concerned, should you not be? That destroy you, his hate for you could?" Yoda pointed out.

 ** _"Millennia ago, the Dark Lord Bane codified the ultimate doctrine of the Order of the Sith Lords. For no matter how many acolytes there be consigned to our service, always two Sith Lords there are. A Master to embody the power, and an Apprentice to crave it,"_** Darth Vader returned.

 **" _It is natural for the Sith Lord to despise the Dark Lord. It gives us our power, and ensures our worthiness when we claim mastery of the Sith for ourselves,"_** the Sith Lord declared.

"Yet equally natural for the Dark Lord to seek self-preservation, is it not?" Yoda questioned.

"Shared his secrets with you, has Sidious?" he questioned the fallen Jedi Knight.

 ** _"I do not need his guidance. Not even he can understand the power that flows through me...and my son,"_** Darth Vader pridefully deflected.

 ** _"The boy will need to know me to know himself,"_** he ascertained.

Yoda's lips curled ever so slightly upward. Young Vader's obsession with determining the worth of a being purely on their ability to bend the energies of the Force had led the Sith Lord right into the Jedi sage's trap.

"Perhaps nothing but a stumbling block, you will be!" Yoda responded.

Darth Vader's projected form raised a chocolate brown eyebrow in bemusement.

"Progress faster than you, he does!" the wise Jedi's Master continued.

Given the little guidance Master Kenobi was able to give Luke Skywalker, the strength the young man had achieved was nothing short of astonishing. What Yoda had seen him suffer and survive on one of the most wintry planets in the galaxy just several days before? Many a Jedi Padawan and a fair amount of Jedi Knights would not have seen the sun rise once more.

Though it was impossible to analyze the midichlorian count of a Skywalker's blood, for they exceeded even the limits of a scale capable of measuring 22,000 per cell, sensitivity to the Force tended to heighten with each successive generation of a Force-sensitive bloodline. It was for this very reason that Sith bloodlines rarely came into existence; for the child of either the Dark Lord or of the subordinate Sith Lord was bound to ascend to mastery at a relatively young age.

If the Dark Lord Sidious truly wanted to create an apprentice to displace and succeed him, the Emperor needed only to sire a child. Clearly, he did not care for this. And for however great a threat the Emperor's own child would have posed, twice the threat would each of the young Skywalker twins pose to him. Much less to Vader.

"If power alone determines a teacher's worth, then worthless you are!" Yoda struck at the Sith Lord.

 **" _That boy has pranced around swinging a saber without instruction for three YEARS. I have danced around the Jedi saber instructors you held in high esteem for three DECADES!"_** Darth Vader emphatically denied.

"Seventy-seven years of study, your predecessor Tyranus had. Yet destroyed him, you did," Yoda reminded the fallen Knight, who himself had slain a Sith Lord endowed with six times the years training and experience.

"And destroy you, your offspring will!" the venerable sage pressed.

 ** _"With whose teachings?"_** Darth Vader scoffed.

"Instructed by Kenobi, he was. Never bested your old master, did you," Yoda reminded.

 **" _Fool! I destroyed that dithering old hermit three years ago!"_** Darth Vader thundered, his misguided pride betraying his simple understanding of the infinite mysteries of the Force.

"Struck him down, your blade did not," the nearly nine-hundred year old Jedi's Master calmly refuted.

 ** _"You refer to him absorbing the Living Force from his withered body to grant temporary non-corporeal longevity to his spirit? It is an old hollow shenanigan once employed by Sith Lords of millennia past,"_** Darth Vader scorned.

 ** _"The fools truly believed they had found a permanent escape from rejoining the Cosmic Force. Failing to realize that without a body to act as the Living Force's conduit, their pool of Force energy was but a finite resource. And once depleted, their charade was finished,"_** the Sith Lord mocked his predecessors.

 ** _"And for those few who managed to prolong their existence by centuries, they regretted every miserable second of it. A useless existence in which former Dark Lords found themselves utterly powerless to so much as defend their own tombs from plunder. The ultimate laughingstocks,"_** he continued.

 ** _"Our order abandoned this failed stratagem millennia ago. But Jedi were always rather slow to catch on to the faculties of the Force,"_** Darth Vader derided.

"One with the Force, Kenobi is," Yoda rebutted. A statement which he could both see and sense had utterly bewildered the Sith Lord. For Vader could sense that the green sage before him had spoken naught but the truth.

"For true knowledge and understanding, peace and patience they require. Faith. Humility. Gentleness. Self-control. And the wisdom they form. Of these, a Sith knows **not**!" the Master of the Jedi lectured the presumptuous Sith.

"Immortal, Kenobi is! Hollow, your presumed victory was!" Yoda finished.

Darth Vader's form blinked rapidly, clearly at a loss as for how to process this information.

 ** _"What ever you say...matters not. Skywalker is within my grasp..."_** the Sith Lord started before halting abruptly.

 ** _"What is it General?"_** he boomed in inquiry, his human toned voice shifting fully to the mechanical baritone his physical form possessed.

Although the Darth kept an active link with the dark power of the tomb Yoda stood in, it was clear Vader's attention was now focused on an Imperial General reporting to him.

 ** _"The Rebels are alerted to our presence. Admiral Ozzel came out of light-speed too close to the system,"_** the Sith Lord uttered in a carefully controlled voice. But the Master of the Jedi could feel a rage so icy that it made frosty Ilum feel like tropical Felucia.

 ** _"He is as clumsy as he is stupid. General, prepare your troops for a surface attack,"_** the livid Lord of the Sith commanded.

At this moment, the figure before Yoda transformed. The standing human form Darth Vader had projected dissipated to reveal the seated form of the half-cyborg Sith Lord he truly was. Furthermore, the solidity of the image flickered and became translucent, showing that only a small fraction of the Sith's power was now being used to keep the link with the tomb.

 ** _"Failed me...last time. Captain Piett...land troops...deploy the fleet...command...ADMIRAL Piett,"_** Darth Vader's voice came to Yoda as if the Master of the Jedi were a dozen meters under water.

 ** _"Three months,"_** the cybernetic Sith Lord suddenly boomed at Yoda with full clarity.

"Hmmmm?" the Jedi's Master asked for clarification.

 ** _"If the boy eludes me due to that imbecile Ozzel's failure, I will give you three months to train him. Then...I will call for him,"_** Darth Vader stated.

"Convert him to the Dark Side, you will not," Yoda declared, stabbing his walking stick into the ground for emphasis.

 ** _"You may find you are mistaken about a great many things,"_** the Sith Lord ominously promised before dissipating completely, rising out of the deep meditation he had been in to attack the Alliance to Restore the Republic.

* * *

 _"Luke Skywalker has evaded his dark father's grasp,"_ the spirit of Obi-Wan Kenobi informed Yoda the minute the Master of the Jedi awoke from the slumber he fell into upon returning to his hut.

 _"Within a few days, he will arrive on this planet at long last,"_ the ethereal Jedi Master promised.

"Trained, can he be?" Yoda asked his dearest friend.

Three months before Darth Vader summoned him. How the Sith Lord would do that, the Jedi's Master did not know. But he had surmised some potential plots, and feared that Luke would be all too hasty to abandon his Jedi training. And if he did...

 _"We can only **do** or **do not** ,"_ Obi-Wan responded before fading away. Leaving the eight-hundred and ninety-nine year old Jedi sage to ponder the most singularly consequential decision he would ever make.

* * *

**Happy New Years everyone! May 2021 be a much better year than the last.**


End file.
